The founders of ConnectU, an also-ran social network that emerged from Harvard University around the same time as Facebook, are renewing their charge that Mark Zuckerberg stole their ideas, amid claims of new "smoking gun" instant messenger evidence.
ConnectU was founded by twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, contemporaries of …

Go on judge......

Oh....

Hang on...

..had they patented the idea or something? Unless he actually nicked their code, what exactly is their argument?

I thought of a really great idea for a small product about a month ago. After some hunting on the net, I found that another person has made the same thing. I'm not too bothered though - I'll simply make a better one. This has happened to me several times in my life with various things. Can I sue them for getting there before me?

Someone having the same idea as you is not illegal, even if you inspired them.

Pot, Kettle...

Facebook's countersuit is pretty funny - because in order to populate the site enough so that it was vaguely useful to the users at Harvard (this is back in 2004 when the site was only open to Harvard undergrads), Zuckerberg took photos from the Harvard student directory without students' permission (and got hauled up in front of the University administrative board for it). They may have stolen some of his data, but he did exactly the same thing to a different directory...